We have looked at how we can support our customers better. We identified that we need to work more closely with our partners and customers to understand and learn their needs and requirements. Based on that we have decided to introduce a dedicated Customer Success team (CS) at eZ . In short, the CS team will work closely with our customers to actively collect feedback that we can use to further improve our products and services. This also helps us to better understand our customers business, strategy, vision and end goals. Consequently, this will put us in a much better position to help our customers get the most out of their investment in our products and services.

What will this mean for you as a customer?

Enterprise customers will have a set number of meetings:

There will be a clearly defined number of meetings with each of our customers depending on the subscription level. For our larger customers we will have core meetings that focus on the following three categories; business, editorial and technical.

Not only a vendor

We will listen to you and collect information that allows us to provide more value to you as a customer. Our goal is together with the implementation partner to better understand why you have chosen eZ and how we can offer better return of investment to you. This means we want to be more of a trusted advisor and see how your needs can be met by our software.

Customer driven roadmap

It is important for us to be able to identify if there are common features that many of our customers ask for. The CS team works closely with product management to ensure that your voice is heard. We will collect these feature requests and when it makes sense push to have these features added to our platform.

Honest feedback is welcome

During our meetings we want to understand what we are doing right, but even more importantly we want to hear your honest opinion on the product. If you are not happy, we will not be!, it's that plain and simple.

Improved dialog

We will have regular touchpoints with you where the overall goal is twofold. We will make sure to understand your needs and plans for working with our platform and at the same time make sure you also know what our platform has in store for you. This means you should in the same way as our partner have a clear understanding of the direction of our products and be familiar with functionality we introduce in the coming releases.

As mentioned, projects on eZ are implemented by our great partners who are well versed in seeing where eZ is a great fit for the customers. With the Customer Success initiative, we do not only focus on the end customers, but also on improving how we work with our partners. We truly recognize that the customer will get the best experience from our software if the partner and eZ think collectively about how the products can be made more attractive in all ways.

How will you as a partner benefit from these changes?

Actively supporting you in your projects

We will make sure to follow your projects more carefully. Make no mistake, you will implement the projects, but we want to offer you our best practices. Customer Success will also make sure you can get the support you expect by involving the right people at eZ. Because you have real experience from driving implementation projects we are eager to learn how you can become more efficient in solving your tasks with our products.

Working together with our customers

Our mutual customers today deal with projects that most often do not have an end date. The idea is to have you continuously work with our customers and pair their business needs with new functionality of the platform. We believe this will be a great combination for all three. As all our implementation partners know it is of course much easier and risk reducing to keep a digital solution evolving through many smaller implementation tasks then having to start with new big bang projects every time. If eZ can show customers the core functionality of the platform, we want to see you take advantage of this to solve challenges the customers may have.

Meetings together with the customer

We will invite you to participate in meetings with our mutual customers. This is key to be able to show how we work together with the focus of making projects powered by eZ software a success for the customer.

I hope you now have a better understanding and see how the customer will receive more attention from us. As Director Customer Success at eZ, I am truly excited to learn even more about how our platform is used to meet the requirements of organizations today. Looking forward to the next chapter.

We have looked at how we can support our customers better. We identified that we need to work more closely with our partners and customers to understand and learn their needs and requirements. Based on that we have decided to introduce a dedicated Customer Success team (CS) at eZ . In short, the CS team will work closely with our customers to actively collect feedback that we can use to further improve our products and services. This also helps us to better understand our customers business, strategy, vision and end goals. Consequently, this will put us in a much better position to help our customers get the most out of their investment in our products and services.

What will this mean for you as a customer?

Enterprise customers will have a set number of meetings:

There will be a clearly defined number of meetings with each of our customers depending on the subscription level. For our larger customers we will have core meetings that focus on the following three categories; business, editorial and technical.

Trusted advisor

We will listen to you and collect information that allows us to provide more value to you as a customer. Our goal is together with the implementation partner to better understand why you have chosen eZ and how we can offer better return of investment to you. Our goal will be to educate you as a customer, by showing you how our products can be used in an optimal way. In our meetings we will offer hands on sessions, both for marketing and editorial use cases. We will be more than just a vendor!

Customer driven roadmap

It is important for us to be able to identify if there are common features that many of our customers ask for. The CS team works closely with product management to ensure that your voice is heard. We will collect these feature requests and when it makes sense push to have these features added to our platform.

Honest feedback is welcome

During our meetings we want to understand what we are doing right, but even more importantly we want to hear your honest opinion on the product. If you are not happy, we will not be!, it's that plain and simple.

Improved dialog

We will have regular touchpoints with you where the overall goal is twofold. We will make sure to understand your needs and plans for working with our platform and at the same time make sure you also know what our platform has in store for you. This means you should in the same way as our partner have a clear understanding of the direction of our products and be familiar with functionality we introduce in the coming releases.

As mentioned, projects on eZ are implemented by our great partners who are well versed in seeing where eZ is a great fit for the customers. With the Customer Success initiative, we do not only focus on the end customers, but also on improving how we work with our partners. We truly recognize that the customer will get the best experience from our software if the partner and eZ think collectively about how the products can be made more attractive in all ways.

How will you as a partner benefit from these changes?

Actively supporting you in your projects

We will make sure to follow your projects more carefully. Make no mistake, you will implement the projects, but we want to offer you our best practices. Customer Success will also make sure you can get the support you expect by involving the right people at eZ. Because you have real experience from driving implementation projects we are eager to learn how you can become more efficient in solving your tasks with our products.

Working together with our customers

Our mutual customers today deal with projects that most often do not have an end date. The idea is to have you continuously work with our customers and pair their business needs with new functionality of the platform. We believe this will be a great combination for all three. As all our implementation partners know it is of course much easier and risk reducing to keep a digital solution evolving through many smaller implementation tasks then having to start with new big bang projects every time. If eZ can show customers the core functionality of the platform, we want to see you take advantage of this to solve challenges the customers may have.

Meetings together with the customer

We will invite you to participate in meetings with our mutual customers. This is key to be able to show how we work together with the focus of making projects powered by eZ software a success for the customer.

I hope you now have a better understanding and see how the customer will receive more attention from us. As Director Customer Success at eZ, I am truly excited to learn even more about how our platform is used to meet the requirements of organizations today. Looking forward to the next chapter.

Developer Training Day

The first day, June 6, was a full day of training for developers in both basic and advanced levels. And in the afternoon the by-invitation only Product Innovation Board met to discuss the future of editorial experiences on eZ Platform.

eZ Conference Day 1

June 7 kicked off eZ Conference. In the morning we held a Partner meeting and lunch, where eZ partners heard about the latest developments in partner relations.

Aleksander Farstad, eZ’s CEO and Co-Founder initiated the conference in the afternoon with a keynote around digital transformation and the role of content. He invited Roland Benedetti, head of product to share the latest product news and roadmap. The highlights were a status update on project v2, which is currently in alpha and includes the revamp of eZ Platform UI that will provide lightning fast editorial experience and much needed customization and extensibility capabilities based on the Symfony framework which will reach version 3. Roland also announced the launch of eZ Platform Cloud, an integrated Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering of eZ Platform built together with eZ’s partner Platform.sh. Following Aleksander and Roland’s talk were simultaneous Business and Technical Track sessions. The highlights of the day were two packed sessions in the Technical Track that gave an introduction to the forthcoming eZ Platform v2. Damien Pobel, eZ’s Lead Engineer for User Interface talked about eZ Platform UI 2.x, and a joint presentation from André Rømcke, eZ’s VP Engineering and Bertrand Dunogier, eZ’s Lead Engineer for eZ Platform revealed what developers can expect next for eZ Platform 2.x and Symfony 3.

Day one was also where the big festivities happened. After speaking sessions ended, everyone gathered outside by the Tower of London for a barbecue. The London weather was as expected—rainy and windy, but it didn’t stop us from enjoying the start of a great evening. Once back inside, we kicked off the eZ Awards ceremony lasting until 2am with a live band and open bar. eZ crew announced and welcomed winners on stage to hand them their eZ trophies.

eZ Conference Day 2

June 8 was a full day of Business and Technical Track sessions, including morning keynotes from digital customer experience expert, Gerry McGovern in his memorable presentation “Building a Customer-centric Organization” and an afternoon keynote from Richard Jones, technical director at Inviqa about “Content in 7 Dimensions.”

eZ Dev Bar

New this year: throughout days one and two we had the eZ Dev Bar—a section in the main conference area where developers could hang out, sit on blow-up chairs and play with eZ Platform v2. An eZ engineer or eZ Platform expert was always around to answer questions or give demos.

Hackathon

The more tenacious developers within the eZ community kept the pace high and joined forces in our hackathon on Friday morning, hosted by and at the Inviqa office. This was the first edition of a hackathon at the eZ Conference and was a soft test. It was very positive though it gathered a smaller share of developers attending the conference. Congrats to Sebastien Morel and Frank Dege who made good progress with their work on respective projects eZ Launchpad and Silver Shop.

Announcements: eZ London Office & eZ Platform Cloud

eZ Conference was also an opportune time to announce a new eZ office to open in London in the next few months plus, as mentioned above a new product release: eZ Platform Cloud, a new cloud hosting solution providing eZ Platform as a Platform as a Service (PaaS).

eZ Conference remains an event with the goal of bringing the eZ community together to match faces to names and learn about developments in eZ’s software, all while enjoying a great venue location and plenty of networking. For more tweets from eZ Conference 2017 search #ezconf2017, view pictures on Facebook and check out presentation slides from some of our speakers.

We’re grateful for all who attended this year and for those who couldn’t, we hope to see you next time. Stay tuned for a video recap plus location and date announcements for eZ Conference 2018 coming soon!

eZ Conference Day

Morten Ingebrigtsen, new eZ’s CEO initiated the conference in the morning with a keynote. He shared updates on where eZ stands today and where it will be heading tomorrow. We also heard about eZ strategy and vision, as well as the product roadmap for the rest of 2018 and beyond.

Announcements: eZ Commerce

eZ Conference was also a good time for the release of eZ Commerce, our new e-Commerce solution built on top of eZ Platform. eZ Commerce is a solution that transforms eZ Platform Enterprise Edition into a full-featured platform to meet your e-Commerce and content management needs. Thanks to eZ Commerce, you can now build websites with eZ Platform that combine very rich and complex content with integrated commerce capabilities.

DigiNight

eZ conference came to conclusion with Diginight, a digital theme party held on a cruise boat over the Rhine and organized in partnership with t3n, the leading German digital magazine.

eZ and t3n were excited to invite digital professionals from all over Europe to attend DigiNight Cologne. An evening of learning, networking and professional growth with two keynote sessions and one discussion panel, all focusing on CX and content technology. All DigiNight Cologne attendees were invited to stay for dinner and an open bar after-party.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="fr"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">An amazing <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/eZconf2018?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#eZconf2018</a> in Cologne is over!<br>Thanks to all that participated, and all our sponsors! <br>Next year we celebrate eZ Systems 20th anniversary! Where would you like us to host <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/eZconf2019?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#eZconf2019</a>? Any suggestions from the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/eZcommunity?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#eZcommunity</a>? <a href="https://t.co/yN7dGHxMpM">pic.twitter.com/yN7dGHxMpM</a></p>&mdash; eZ Systems Nordics (@eZnordics) <a href="https://twitter.com/eZnordics/status/1004650541316694016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">7 juin 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Partner Meeting

June 7, in the morning we held a Partner meeting where eZ partners heard about the latest developments in partner relations.

eZ Conference remains an event with the goal of bringing the eZ community together to match faces to names and learn about developments in eZ’s software, all while enjoying a great venue location and plenty of networking. For more tweets from eZ Conference 2018 search #ezconf2018, view pictures on Facebook and check out presentation slides from some of our speakers.

We’re grateful for all who attended this year and for those who couldn’t, we hope to see you next time. Stay tuned for a video recap plus location and date announcements for eZ Conference 2019 coming soon!

eZ Conference Day

Morten Ingebrigtsen, new eZ’s CEO initiated the conference in the morning with a keynote. He shared updates on where eZ stands today and where it will be heading tomorrow. We also heard about eZ strategy and vision, as well as the product roadmap for the rest of 2018 and beyond.

Announcements: eZ Commerce

eZ Conference was also a good time for the release of eZ Commerce, our new e-Commerce solution built on top of eZ Platform. eZ Commerce is a solution that transforms eZ Platform Enterprise Edition into a full-featured platform to meet your e-Commerce and content management needs. Thanks to eZ Commerce, you can now build websites with eZ Platform that combine very rich and complex content with integrated commerce capabilities.

DigiNight

eZ conference came to conclusion with Diginight, a digital theme party held on a cruise boat over the Rhine and organized in partnership with t3n, the leading German digital magazine.

eZ and t3n were excited to invite digital professionals from all over Europe to attend DigiNight Cologne. An evening of learning, networking and professional growth with two keynote sessions and one discussion panel, all focusing on CX and content technology. All DigiNight Cologne attendees were invited to stay for dinner and an open bar after-party.

Partner Meeting

In the morning of 7 June, we gathered our partners for a breakfast meeting to share the latest product updates as well as share information about the developments in the partner channel.
It was fantastic to end the conference in Cologne together with our partners, and we are already excited to the next big partner conference that has been set to 24-25 January, 2019. Place and program will be announced soon. As announced during our partner meeting, Camilla Unger has stepped in as Global Partner Manager with a global and strategic focus, working close together with our regional partner managers, to optimise and further develop eZ´s partner channel.

eZ Conference remains an event with the goal of bringing the eZ community together to match faces to names and learn about developments in eZ’s software, all while enjoying a great venue location and plenty of networking. For more tweets from eZ Conference 2018 search #ezconf2018, view pictures on Flickr and check out presentation slides from some of our speakers, we are adding them still continuosly.

We’re grateful for all who attended this year and for those who couldn’t, we hope to see you next time. Stay tuned for a video recap plus location and date announcements for eZ Conference 2019 coming soon!